<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Eternal by MageOfCole</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26364136">Eternal</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MageOfCole/pseuds/MageOfCole'>MageOfCole</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Angst and Feels, Bittersweet, Bittersweet Ending, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Love Confessions, M/M, Mando'a, Mind Control, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Post-Order 66, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope, Reunions, Touch-Starved Alpha-17, Touch-Starved Obi-Wan Kenobi, Tragedy, lots of mentioned characters - Freeform, the clones deserved better, the jedi deserved better</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:27:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,784</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26364136</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MageOfCole/pseuds/MageOfCole</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years after the fall of the Republic, Ben Kenobi hears about a Mandalorian in Anchorhead.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alpha-17 &amp; Clone Troopers (Star Wars), Alpha-17/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Boba Fett &amp; Obi-Wan Kenobi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>516</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Eternal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedisasternerd/gifts">thedisasternerd</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There's a Mandalorian in Anchorhead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben Kenobi hears about it during a trip for supplies into Mos Eisley, slipping unnoticed through the crowds. Its when he passes two settlers that the whispers reach his ears as two women speak to each other in nervously quiet voices, talking about the Mandalorian in black and blue that lingers like a frightening phantom or a bomb primed to explode, asking around about 'the desert hermit', and Ben falters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There's only one Mandalorian welcomed on Tatooine, employed by Jabba the Hutt and unwilling to share his coin pouch, and Ben knows that Boba would warn him if something changed about the Imperial bounty on his head. Boba was a good lad in need of guidance and advice - hardened by the world and tragedy far too early, and still so young in so many ways, despite his complaints that he wasn’t a child anymore. It hadn’t been easy to win the boy’s trust when he had come to his hut all those years ago, arrogant and angry and intent on collecting the massive bounty on his head himself, but Ben had worn him down - a part of him needing a young soul to guide and nurture to feel some sort of control in his life - and the child had been so desperate for a connection to his father’s culture that even Ben’s poor substitute was enough. Boba would have warned him, had he known, because as angry as he was at the world, the young man held tight to the things he considered as his, and as much as he complained and claimed that he didn’t like Ben, the youngster had yet to actually do anything to get his bounty. In fact, he actively kept other hunters away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So when he hears the rumours of a Mandalorian bounty hunter that wasn’t Boba poking around looking for him, Ben adjusts the bags in his hands, carefully pulls his hood over his face, and calmly slips off the main market road and into the nearest alley. A simple mind trick has the youth gang gathered in the shadows splitting up and heading home to rethink their life choices, and Ben slides into their place, wedging himself between two dumpsters. It’s hard now, to slip into meditation and expand his senses, knowing that he’ll be met with the yawning Darkness in the Force and the lack of the Light of his fellow Jedi in the galaxy, it’s easy to find himself slipping endlessly without a tether until he doesn’t know who he is anymore, but little Luke Skywalker is a calming beacon of light, a sun among dead stars, and his presence in the Force chases off the clinging Darkness and makes it easier for Ben, as broken as he is, to focus.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mandalorians are surprisingly easy to find in the Force, if one knows what they’re looking for - an indistinct mass shielded by the beskar they wore - but they’re also as rare to stumble upon as a trained Force Sensitive, hunted and scattered almost as much as the Jedi are. They’re a threat, and the Empire made an example of them. A warning to any others of what would happen should they try to fight back against the Emperor. Anyone who could be outwardly identified as Mando’ade had at least a little beskar on their person, even Satine had weaved it into her headdresses, and it was a connection to their lost culture and home that they guarded jealously, even as the Empire collected any and all of the rare metal it came across, often through violent means.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even the smallest amount of beskar worked to make a Force signature unidentifiable, and for people like Ben, who had worn and owned beskar, the imprints the alloy left on the galaxy around it is easy to locate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He finds the headache-inducing Force signature in his hut. A fuzzy, staticy spot in the Force with only the faintest of traces of nostalgic emotions sparking among their mind, and the familiar signature of Ben’s lightsaber reaches out to them, an excited greeting like an old love had finally come home.</span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Alpha-17 comes out of the rise of the Empire with his sense of self intact through sheer dumb luck - apparently all those explosions Alpha had powered through came with some sort of perks, beyond the general sense of awe and fear his inability to die inspired among the brats. He stubbornly avoids the same fate his fellow Alpha-classers meet, staying too useful as a trainer for it to be worth putting down or in stasis as he bides his time and plans his escape.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s nothing he can do for the younger troopers, and he’s forced to come to terms with the fact quickly when he sees the blankness in the eyes of the men he had trained. It’s a punch to the guts, one he can’t show, when he passes Havoc and Blitz in the hall and they show no familiar recognition to him or each other - they’re silent, blank, and unrecognizable from the cadets Alpha had thrown around during training. It feels like he’s drowning when Cody shows up and there’s no personality, no burning fire, in his blank eyes as the tactical genius and determined field commander is assigned to a glorified desk job to give a natborn whelp the rank he had been so proud of. There’s none of Wolffe’s feral determination to protect, or Bly’s gentle kindness - and both of them disappear quickly, taken away quietly in the night for decommissioning when they break. So many empty faces and cold eyes, and sometimes it feels like Alpha is choking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had raised all of them, and it hurts to see them as walking corpses - it hurts more that he can’t help them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Alpha bides his time until he sees an opportunity and takes it. Fox is killed on a mission with Lord Vader, and a new Purge Trooper is needed to replace him - who better than the trooper that had trained him? Alpha adds the clever little cadet and broken man he had known to his remembrances as he puts on his new armour - black-painted beskar’gam, because Vader’s personal death squad were the best and thus needed the best - and marches to face his fate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re hunting surviving Mandalorian commandos when Alpha sees his chance to shed the helmet of a clone and strip out of the ugly red pauldron of a purge trooper, to take up a </span>
  <em>
    <span>buy’ce </span>
  </em>
  <span>and a new identity. To the Empire, Alpha-17 dies on Concordia, one victim of many to fall in the mines, body buried by tonnes of rocks that would be his tomb. But Alpha lives, he survives, and he finally does the one thing he had always dreamed of doing, but never did because he had </span>
  <em>
    <span>vod’e </span>
  </em>
  <span>to protect and refused to be like Spar and leave them all behind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He deserts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His brothers and sisters are as good as dead now - in fact, death would probably be preferable to what had become of them - and Alpha lets himself disappear. He becomes nameless, faceless, but this time it’s a choice - he becomes ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Mando</span>
  </em>
  <span>’, a ruthless bounty hunter with a hatred for Imperials. Any stormtrooper he comes across is put down with a quick, efficient, shot through the head because Alpha doesn’t know anymore which are </span>
  <em>
    <span>vod’e </span>
  </em>
  <span>and which are the poorly trained natborns that replace them. The Empire only makes half-hearted attempts to kill him, at best, because he’s good at what he does and the Guild doesn’t want to lose him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He uses his new contacts to listen for any possible Jedi sightings, because he knows that his </span>
  <em>
    <span>jetii </span>
  </em>
  <span>is still alive. The massive bounty on the General’s head isn’t just for show, afterall, and Alpha knows that the smug </span>
  <em>
    <span>sheb </span>
  </em>
  <span>is too dramatic to just roll over and die when he could continue living just to piss people off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alpha’s already lost everything else - his brothers and sisters, his rank, his </span>
  <em>
    <span>purpose </span>
  </em>
  <span>- he doesn’t want to lose the only man he’d ever loved too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their relationship hadn’t been the steadiest - Kenobi had been his superior, a Jedi that he served because he </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>to, but then Rattatak and Ventress had happened, and a professional respect had turned into something </span>
  <em>
    <span>more</span>
  </em>
  <span> through their captivity and recovery. After that, Alpha had been promoted and reassigned to Kamino as a trainer, and he had been answering to a different Jedi General instead. They had taken any moment together that they could, because their duties had led them on different paths, and it hadn’t been easy, because Alpha was a cold bastard at the best of times and Obi-Wan’s inability to properly express himself had come between them, but they had always tried to do better by each other - but it was all gone now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And maybe Alpha wants more. He wants the stability and support Obi-Wan had always offered him after the loss of everything he had ever known, and he wants to offer it in turn - to have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>purpose </span>
  </em>
  <span>again. But Alpha is a realist, he knows that it’s not likely that he’ll actually find his lover out there in the galaxy if he doesn’t want to be found as much as Alpha </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants </span>
  </em>
  <span>to find him, so he keeps his goals a little more realistic. He passes his information anonymously onto the fledgling Rebellion, throwing them what he knows on the postings of </span>
  <em>
    <span>vod’e</span>
  </em>
  <span>, hoping that what little he can do will help, so he keeps his ear to the ground and continues to give the information onto the Rebellion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s the news about Boba working for Jabba the Hutt that has Alpha flying to Tatooine, intent on hunting his brother down. He hadn’t seen Boba since before Geonosis, before everything had gone to shit and Aurra Sing had gotten her claws into the boy. He’d be nineteen now, Alpha knows - an adult, but still young in the way the other clones aren’t, despite being the first, and alone. He knows his little-big brother can take care of himself, that he’s talented and deadly, but he’s also one of the few free clones that exist, and Alpha wants to at least check in on him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s on Tatooine that Alpha first hears the name Ben Kenobi, and hears the legends of the crazy hermit living in the Dune Sea. The native Sand People of the planet call him a mournful god and they leave offerings so that misfortune isn’t brought upon them. The settlers call him either a crazy old man or the wizard of the wastes. There’s only one thing everyone agrees on - don’t anger the man who lives in the desert. More than one story about thugs trying to shake him down for money includes coming back not fully the same, and Alpha recognizes the description of a mind trick when he hears it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s one of the few people who knows Obi-Wan’s connection to the name Ben, the story behind it, and it’s in meeting young Luke </span>
  <em>
    <span>Skywalker </span>
  </em>
  <span>and his aunt that Alpha knows that he found him.</span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p><p>
  <span>The Force holds no warnings as Ben approaches his hut, just the opposite in fact, as it tugs on his robes like an excited child and urges him forwards, but Ben still palms his blaster as he pushes the door open and steps inside. There’s a man sitting at his table, helmetless, and he looks up when Ben closes the door behind him - in his hands, Ben’s lightsaber </span>
  <em>
    <span>sings </span>
  </em>
  <span>in greeting for the first time in a long time, since it had gone quiet all those years ago, love and the feeling of home chasing away the silence of blood and tragedy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His bag slips from numb fingers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Bottomless brown eyes so dark they’re closer to black meet his gaze. They’re fathomless and deep, drawing him in and drowning him in their depths, holding so many emotions that he feels like he’s choking even as he breathes. The handsome bronze face is older than Ben remembers, with more lines and scars than before, and tight black curls are splashed with gray - he’s a decade older than he was, but his face is still familiar and comforting - frightening too, because it brings back the memories of bodies young and old killed in their home by those they trusted, and makes the thousands of broken bonds in his soul </span>
  <em>
    <span>ache </span>
  </em>
  <span>with the weight of emptiness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stares, hand falling away from the blaster at his hip, and the man stands. The armour is different, but Ben recognizes the pattern painted on the black beskar, now accompanied by splashes of gold stating his desire for vengeance for everyone to see, pauldron missing and a shorter kama swinging around his knees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“General.” The man states, voice gruff and Concord Dawn accent strong, though it’s so much more hesitant than Ben ever has a memory of hearing. His lover was never hesitant, not even when they had first started their secret little rendezvous; he was always assured, confident, and strong - even when chained and brutalized. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Cyare.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben shudders, blinking but unable to tear his gaze away from those dark eyes, and his voice breaks when he speaks. “I haven’t heard that in a long time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries for humorous, and it falls short, but even then the other man smiles, a sad, quiet little thing that spoke of grief and heartbreak and exhaustion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s real.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>here</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Haven’t said it either.” Alpha-17 flips the lightsaber in his hands, stepping closer and closer still until they’re chest-to-chest and in each other’s space for the first time in years, and Ben shivers. “Thought you were always telling those brats of yours that their weapons were their lives.” The man says gruffly, and with a click the weight of his lightsaber is added to his belt, but even then Ben can’t look away from Alpha’s gaze. The other man doesn’t seem intent on looking away either, and large, warm hands linger on his hips, making heat travel from the touch and circulate through his body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello Alpha.” Ben whispers, reaching between them to grip the edges of his armour, to press his fingers around them to seek out the warmth of another living being for the first time in a long time. He can’t make his voice louder than a shaky sigh, throat tight and heart pounding in his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alpha continues to stare like a dying man who had seen the other side and wanted more, leaning into his touch until there was no space left between them. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Su cuy’gar</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” He says, awed, like he couldn’t fully believe it, and his fingers spasm, drawing the former Jedi even closer to him, as if he would vanish if he let go. The armour presses uncomfortably against him, but Ben can’t bring himself to care as Alpha presses their foreheads together, noses touching, and every breath mingling. “You’re here.” Alpha says, “I found you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.” Against all the odds, he had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” His voice is hushed, reverent, and Ben chuckles wetly for lack of what else to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I haven’t heard that for some time either.” He says, instead of what his head is telling him, that he’s undeserving of such sentiment, as he leans into the pressure on his brow and closes his eyes. He can’t cry, not anymore - he has no tears left to shed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ll hear it for as long as I breathe.” Alpha vows, and Ben shudders again at the truth of that statement that rings in the Force like a bell. “As long as you’ll have me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve become awfully sentimental, my dear.” Ben chokes, and Alpha huffs, breath fanning against his lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“After everything - I think we’ve both earned a little sentimentality.” The man murmurs, and Ben laughs wetly. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ni kar’tayl gar darasuum</span>
  </em>
  <span>, </span>
  <em>
    <span>cyare</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ben doesn’t want to let go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stay?” Ben asks, clinging to his lover just as tightly as Alpha clings to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course.” Alpha promises, hands sliding away from his hips to cradle his face instead, thumbs brushing oh so gently under his eyes - hands that could destroy droids without issue and kill without hesitation, but had only ever been soft when they touch him. “I said </span>
  <em>
    <span>darasuum</span>
  </em>
  <span>, didn’t I, </span>
  <em>
    <span>ner cyare</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Ben’s eyes flutter open, meeting Alpha’s deep gaze once more, seeing the love and truth in those dark pools, and -</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wet, burning tears drip from his aching eyes, sliding down sunburnt cheeks and over Alpha’s strong fingers, a dark contrast against his pale skin, and his lover tilts his head, gently capturing his chapped lips in a silent promise.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Darasuum</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>